• Journal of Ginseng Research
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.349-353
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• 2019

Autophagy is the sequential process whereby cell components are degraded, which can occur due to nutrient deprivation. Its regulation has an essential role in many diseases, functioning in both cell survival and cell death. Autophagy starts when mTORC1 is inhibited, resulting in the activation of several complexes to form a cargo that fuses with a lysosome, where it undergoes degradation. In this review, we describe a plant extract that is well known in Korea, namely Korean ginseng extract; we studied how its derivatives and metabolites can regulate autophagy and thus mediate the pathogenesis of certain diseases.

• BMB Reports
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.143-148
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• 2024

Pulmonary fibrosis is a serious lung disease that occurs predominantly in men. Genistein is an important natural soybean-derived phytoestrogen that affects various biological functions, such as cell migration and fibrosis. However, the antifibrotic effects of genistein on pulmonary fibrosis are largely unknown. The antifibrotic effects of genistein were evaluated using in vitro and in vivo models of lung fibrosis. Proteomic data were analyzed using nano-LC-ESI-MS/MS. Genistein significantly reduced transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1-induced expression of collagen type I and α-smooth muscle actin (SMA) in MRC-5 cells and primary fibroblasts from patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Genistein also reduced TGF-β1-induced expression of p-Smad2/3 and p-p38 MAPK in fibroblast models. Comprehensive protein analysis confirmed that genistein exerted an anti-fibrotic effect by regulating various molecular mechanisms, such as unfolded protein response, epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT), mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) signaling, cell death, and several metabolic pathways. Genistein was also found to decrease hydroxyproline levels in the lungs of BLM-treated mice. Genistein exerted an anti-fibrotic effect by preventing fibroblast activation, suggesting that genistein could be developed as a pharmacological agent for the prevention and treatment of pulmonary fibrosis.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.70-84
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• 2022

Purpose: Skeletal muscles display significant heterogeneity in metabolic responses, owing to the composition of metabolically distinct fiber types. Recently, numerous studies have reported that in skeletal muscles, suppression of genes related to fatty acid channeling alters the triacylglycerol (TAG) synthesis and switches the energy substrates. However, such responses may differ, depending on the type of muscle fiber. Hence, we conducted in vitro and animal studies to compare the metabolic responses of different types of skeletal muscle fibers to the deficiency of fatty acyl-CoA synthetase (Acsl)6, one of the main fatty acid-activating enzymes. Methods: Differentiated skeletal myotubes were transfected with selected Acsl6 short interfering RNA (siRNA), and C57BL/6J mice were subjected to siRNA to induce Acsl6 deficiency. TAG accumulation and expression levels of insulin signaling proteins in response to acute glucose supplementation were measured in immortalized cell-based skeletal myotubes, oxidative muscles (OM), and glycolytic muscles (GM) derived from the animals. Results: Under conditions of high glucose supplementation, suppression of the Acsl6 gene resulted in decreased TAG and glycogen synthesis in the C2C12 skeletal myotubes. The expression of Glut4, a glucose transporter, was similarly downregulated. In the animal study, the level of TAG accumulation in OM was higher than levels determined in GM. However, a similar decrease in TAG accumulation was obtained in the two muscle types in response to Acsl6 suppression. Moreover, Acsl6 suppression enhanced the phosphorylation of insulin signaling proteins (Foxo-1, mTORc-1) only in GM, while no such changes were observed in OM. In addition, the induction ratio of phosphorylated proteins in response to glucose or Acsl6 suppression was significantly higher in GM than in OM. Conclusion: The results of this study demonstrate that Acsl6 differentially regulates the energy metabolism of skeletal muscles in response to glucose supplementation, thereby indicating that the fiber type or fiber composition of mixed muscles may skew the results of metabolic studies.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.80 no.2
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• pp.179-186
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• 2017

Background: Although the World Health Organization (WHO) classification of lung squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) was revised in 2015, its clinical implications for lung SCC subsets remain unclear. We investigated whether the morphologic characteristics of lung SCC, including keratinization, were associated with clinical parameters and clinical outcome of patients. Methods: A total of 81 patients who underwent curative surgical resection of diagnosed lung SCC, were enrolled in this study. Attributes such as keratinization, tumor budding, single cell invasion, and nuclear size within the tumor, as well as immunohistochemistry of Bcl-xL and pS6 expressions, were evaluated. Results: The keratinizing and nonkeratinizing subtypes did not differ with respect to age, sex, TNM stage, and morphologic parameters such as nuclear diameter, tumor budding, and single cell invasion at the tumor edge. Most patients with the keratinizing subtype (98.0%) had a history of smoking, whereas the nonkeratinizing group had a relatively higher proportion of never-smokers relative to the keratinizing group (24.0% vs. 2.0%; p=0.008, chi-square test). Expression of pS6 (a surrogate marker of mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 [mTORC1] signaling that regulates keratinocyte differentiation), and Bcl-xL (a key anti-apoptotic molecule that may inhibit keratinization), did not correlate significantly with the presence of keratinization. Patients with the keratinizing subtype had a significantly shorter overall survival (85.2 months vs. 135.7 months, p=0.010, log-rank test), and a multivariate analysis showed that keratinization was an independent, poor prognostic factor (hazard ratio, 2.389; 95% confidence interval, 1.090-5.233; p=0.030). Conclusion: In lung SCC, keratinization is associated with a poor prognosis, and might be associated with smoking.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.203-207
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• 2009

The target of rapamycin (TOR) signaling pathway conserved from yeast to human plays critical roles in regulation of eukaryotic cell growth. It has been shown that TOR pathway is involved in several cellular processes, including ribosome biogenesis, nutrient response, autophagy and aging. However, due to the functional diversity of TOR pathway, we do not know yet some key effectors of the pathway. To find unknown effectors of TOR signaling pathway, we took advantage of a green fluorescent protein (GFP)-tagged collection of budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We analyzed protein abundance changes by measuring the GFP fluorescence intensity of 4156 GFP-tagged yeast strains under inhibition of TOR pathway. Our proteomic analysis argues that 83 proteins are decreased whereas 32 proteins are increased by treatment of rapamycin, a specific inhibitor of TOR complex 1 (TORC1). We found that, among the 115 proteins that show significant changes in protein abundance under rapamycin treatment, 37 proteins also show expression changes in the mRNA levels by more than 2-fold under the same condition. We suggest that the 115 proteins indentified in this study may be directly or indirectly involved in TOR signaling and can serve as candidates for further investigation of the effectors of TOR pathway.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.18
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• pp.8079-8083
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• 2016

Metformin is an oral anti-hyperglycemic agent, which is the most commonly prescribed medication in the treatment of type-2 diabetes mellitus. It is purportedly associated with a reduced risk for various cancers, mainly exerting anti-proliferation effects on various human cancer cell types, such as pancreas, prostate, breast, stomach and liver. This mini-review highlights the risk and benefit of metformin used for cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) prevention and therapy. The results indicated metformin might be a quite promising strategy CCA prevention and treatment, one mechanism being inhibition of CCA tumor growth by cell cycle arrest in both in vitro and in vivo. The AMPK/mTORC1 pathway in intrahepatic CCA cells is targeted by metformin. Furthermore, metformin inhibited CCA tumor growth via the regulation of Drosha-mediated expression of multiple carcinogenic miRNAs. The use of metformin seems to be safe in patients with cirrhosis, and provides a survival benefit. Once hepatic malignancies are already established, metformin does not offer any therapeutic potential. Clinical trials and epidemiological studies of the benefit of metformin use for CCA should be conducted. To date, whether metformin as a prospective chemotherapeutic for CCA is still questionable and waits further atttention.

• Journal of Ginseng Research
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.283-289
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• 2022

Background: Sarcopenia, defined as loss of muscle mass and strength with age, becomes a public health concern as the elderly population increases. This study aimed to determine whether the mixture of soluble whey protein hydrolysate (WPH) and Panax ginseng berry extract (GBE) has a synergetic effect on sarcopenia and, if so, to identify the relevant mechanisms and optimal mixing ratio. Methods: In the first experiment, C57BL/6 mice were hindlimb immobilized for one-week and then administered WPH 800 mg/kg, GBE 100 mg/kg, WPH 800 mg/kg+ GBE 100 mg/kg mixture, and Fructus Schisandrae extract (SFE) 200 mg/kg for two weeks. In the second experiment, experimental design was same, but mice were administered three different doses of WPH and GBE mixture (WPH 800 mg/kg+ GBE 100 mg/kg, WPH 800 mg/kg+ GBE 90 mg/kg, WPH 1000 mg/kg+ GBE 75 mg/kg). Results: In the first experiment, we confirmed the synergetic effect of WPH and GBE on muscle mass and identified that GBE was more effective on the protein synthesis side, and WPH tended to be slightly more effective for protein degradation. In the second experiment, among three different ratios, the WPH 800 mg/kg+ GBE 100 mg/kg was most effective for muscle mass and strength. The mixtures activated muscle protein synthesis via PI3K/Akt/mTORc1 pathway and inhibited muscle protein degradation via suppressing ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) and autophagy-lysosome system (ALS), and these effects were more GBE dose-dependent than WPH. Conclusion: The WPH and GBE mixture having a synergetic effect is a potential agent to prevent sarcopenia.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.483-490
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• 2020

The ubiquitin system uses ligases and deubiquitinases (DUBs) to regulate ubiquitin position on protein substrates and is involved in many biological processes which determine stability, activity, and interaction of the target substrate. DUBs are classified in six groups according to catalytic domain, namely ubiquitin-specific proteases (USPs); ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolases (UCHs); ovarian tumor proteases (OTUs); Machado Joseph Disease proteases (MJDs); motif interacting with Ub (MIU)-containing novel DUB family (MINDY); and Jab1/MPN/MOV34 metalloenzymes (JAMMs). Otubain 1 (OTUB1) is a DUB in the OTU family which possesses both canonical and non-canonical activity and can regulate multiple cellular signaling pathways. In this review, we describe the function of OTUB1 through regulation of its canonical and non-canonical activities in multiple specifically cancer-associated pathways. The canonical activity of OTUB1 inhibits protein ubiquitination by cleaving Lys48 linkages while its non-canonical activity prevents ubiquitin transfer onto target proteins through binding to E2-conjugating enzymes, resulting in the induction of protein deubiquitination. OTUB1 can therefore canonically and non-canonically promote tumor cell proliferation, invasion, and drug resistance through regulating FOXM1, ERα, KRAS, p53, and mTORC1. Moreover, clinical research has demonstrated that OTUB1 overexpresses with high metastasis in many tumor types including breast, ovarian, esophageal squamous, and glioma. Therefore, OTUB1 has been suggested as a diagnosis marker and potential therapeutic target for oncotherapy.